Loose Change

Detroit will win the Stanley Cup this year and the reason why is simple: Red. While others are wild with anticipation over a pivotal Game 6 Tuesday in Pittsburgh, I’m not terribly excited. It’s not that I don’t think the Penguins can win at home, it’s just their chances of winning the series with a Game 7 victory in Detroit are about the same as Don Cherry becoming an immigration official.

Away on a vacation, Charlie returns to find a mailbox full of questions about the Coyotes, the NHL playoffs and more. The upside to being away from your desk so much is the inability of creditors to know your exact whereabouts. The downside is that you’re deluged with phone messages and email upon your return.

What is it about Jim Balsillie that makes Gary Bettman so angry? There's more to it than you might imagine... You kind of get the feeling NHL commissioner Gary Bettman simply doesn’t like BlackBerry guru and franchise owner-wannabe Jim Balsillie.

One round down (almost), three to go. But there's already been plenty of beefy tidbits to barb. (Preface: In case you weren’t aware, we here at Loose Change are now bi-weekly (or is it bi-monthly?). Either way I feel it’s important you know the truth and that I finally come out of the closet and own up to my alternative literary lifestyle.

With so many pundits weighting in with their playoff predictions, there's only one thing to do: add another to the pile. Oh golly I love this time of year. Playoffs are just starting and I get the chance to indulge myself by abusing my lofty editorially unrestricted position at THN through my annual (once qualifies as “annual”) Stanley Cup predictions.

There's so much going on and it's difficult to pick one topic, so instead Loose Change tries to focus on a number of stories. I’m really having trouble concentrating and I’m worried I might have ADD. For those of you who don’t know, ADD stands for Attention Disorganiz.

Most accolades get thrown around for various on-ice skills, but we'd rather concentrate on the title your parents doomed you with. ‘Tis the time of year when everyone seems to be naming their all-star selections (no, not that All-Star Game thingy - that was done by three mischievous kids at MIT with a brilliant binary algorithm) so it seems high time for me to name my all-stars.

It seems the Habs have tried everything to right their ship before playoff time. Everything, that is, except these thoughtful ideas. Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but things aren’t exactly going well in La Belle Province. Les Canadiens are in the midst of a death spiral that has worn out the city’s 911 system (callers: please use 411 as an alternative; ask for Patty) and the team has quickly gone from possible contender to probable corpse.

Brodeur passing Roy gives the Marty Camp more ammo, but are they dummy rounds? And so it begins.
Martin Brodeur’s recent assault on the NHL record books (in actual fact it’s the records themselves he’s attacking; the books are safe) will once again raise the inane and totally pointless argument over who is the best ever.

The NHL GMs' meetings in Florida provide plenty of fodder for a humor columnist... I’m not here right now to take your call, but if you’ll leave your name and number and a brief message I’ll be sure to phone you back when I get the chance.

For someone on the outside of hockey's intimate circle, trade deadline day must seem more than a little nuts. Oh golly, it’s that time of year again. Aside from Christmas, Hanukah, my birthday, my Mom’s birthday, my dog’s birthday, that old-lady-with-the-ugly-lip-hair’s birthday, Larry King’s birthday (happy 103rd!) and Arbor Day (although it has gotten a little commercialized) this – trade deadline day – is my most favoritist day of the year!
I remember growing up and the way the family would all gather around the pot-bellied stove (for the fumes, not the heat) and listen to the telegraph as it would clatter out the latest trade.

If the league's two biggest stars are going to engage in verbal warfare, they're going to have to up their game. Frankly, this Alex Ovechkin-Sidney Crosby thing is getting pretty ugly.
Anyone who witnessed the most recent tiff between “the game’s two biggest stars” (and you wonder why Dion Phaneuf is so angry) saw the battle continue long after Alex and Sidney left the ice.